If you have a substantial comment, feedback, a critique, or additional information related to a paper previously published in a JMIR journal, we encourage you to
a) submit a comment in our new community discussion boards (we will usually encourage the author to respond and take part in the discussion), or
b) submit a formal short letter to the editor.
There is no Article Processing Fee (APF) for letters to the editor.
Letters to the editor are not usually peer-reviewed (like original papers), but are reviewed by the author of the paper the letter comments on or critiques. If you are the author of a critiqued article and we sent you a letter to the editor critiquing your paper, you are asked to use the letter submission workflow to submit a reply to a letter to the editor. We may publish the letter to the editor and the reply of the author.
In the letter pathway, we will not invite the author of the original letter to the editor to reply to the author reply to avoid an endless back-and-forth. Such discussions are better taken to the community discussion boards.
How to Submit a Letter to the Editor
If you submit a formal "letter to the editor," which we will consider for publication in the journal that the article upon which it comments was originally published, it will usually come with a response from the author. A letter submission is done using the regular submission system. Choose the section "Letter to the Editor" from the drop-down list in the submission process.
Requirements and Process
Letters to the editor, as well as replies to letters, should be short and succinct. The letter to the editor should be no more than 500 words and should have 1-5 references. The first reference should cite the JMIR paper you are commenting on.
As noted above, we will invite the original JMIR authors to review and possibly comment on / reply to your letter to the editor. We may publish their reply together with the letter.
Letters to the editor must comment on a previously published JMIR article (usually not older than 6 months*) and must contain important additional information or critical questions adding value to the understanding of the published paper. We do not allow brief research reports as letters to the editor, please submit a brief original paper/research letter instead (APFs apply).
*While the article the letter is referring to should usually not be older than 6 months, we will consider letters that comment on important issues threatening the validity of a paper (we will ask the author to respond).
Issues or questions about possible research misconduct should be raised with the editor by sending an email to ed-support@jmir.org.
Any other issues are better handled in a private conversation / email exchange with authors.
Should the letter to the editor be published, it will be free of charge for the author. We do not publish all letters, but at a minimum will forward your letter to the editor to the author, and invite them to respond.
Other Article Types
If you are an author of a previously published JMIR paper wishing to add to or correct your previous paper, do not submit a letter, but instead a correction or addendum (which may be subject to a small APF).
If you plan to submit a short communication containing original research/data, consider submitting a "Research Letter." Not all JMIR journals currently publish Research Letters. Please refer to our Knowledge Base to confirm which journals accept Research Letters before you submit (see: What are the article types for JMIR journals?). If your target journal does not publish Research Letters, such papers should be submitted as a Short Paper (the regular APFs apply).
If you have a substantial commentary or viewpoint on an issue, this should be submitted as a "Viewpoint," not as a letter to the editor (again, the regular APFs apply).
See also:
What are the article types for JMIR journals?
How to become an author at JMIR
We published a paper in JMIR and have a correction. What is the process of publishing a corrigendum?
For staff only:
(for staff) How to Handle Letters